Sony Lounge Thread MKIII (All Sony cameras welcome)

Well in my down time today I thought I'd have a play with some of the images from my last holiday, her's one of my favourites so far

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/HrM7​sj

Posted this one to the bierd portrait thread. I'm not entirely sure but I think it is a Moorhen....was pretty far off
and for the longest time I've not be a fan of 'ducks', but this one has I think a very cool slope going on his nose-head.

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Photo from MedicineMan4040's gallery.

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #18595823
Posted this one to the bierd portrait thread. I'm not entirely sure but I think it is a Moorhen....was pretty far off
and for the longest time I've not be a fan of 'ducks', but this one has I think a very cool slope going on his nose-head.

Gallery photo (hosted):
posted by MedicineMan4040 originally in forum: Birds

We saw some similar to that...not the most photogenic....I was thinking American Coot...but my guess is based on crap google searches!

cc1995 wrote in post #18595716
Great shots. Greenhouse with high ceilings seems like a horror show to shoot at night unless you have an assistant following you around with an off camera flash. Did you end up using on-camera flash with some type of modifier (like the Gary Fong Sphere or similar). Just curious since i got asked to shoot an event at night in a space that has high ceilings with cross beams running flat below the ceiling. So if I try to bounce anything up the light is going to come down with harsh shadows of the beams everywhere. This is for my child's school for a Gala fundraiser for the school...nothing too serious and it's more just to document the event and I'm doing it as part of my community hours we as a family need to contribute to the school as a way to keep the tuition down. To boot, it's a Kentucky Derby theme with the ladies wearing these big hats which aren't going to help my cause with lighting as well. I feel like my only option is on-camera flash with a modifier of some sort. I don't have an assistant to walk around holding an off camera light for me..I'm doing this solo. Any advice...lol

This is Travis' shot, but here's the space we had to work with:

cc1995 wrote in post #18595754
Just to update everyone interested in the picture I posted of my sensor a few days ago with those spots I couldn't get off after trying with the Aero-clipse and #3 swabs. I was going to buy some of that Smear Away solution that MedicineMan recommended to see if that would do the trick after making about 8 passes with the Aero-clipse. Before I did I thought I would bring it to Hunts Camera which is right down the street from me to get their opinion on it since I was a bit worried about whether I might damage my sensor and just some piece of mind since they have more experience. I showed them the spots and they even tried cleaning it themselves free of charge with my supplies a few times and they said those spots were on there pretty good and they don't do anything else except for the stuff that I use and that usually does the trick. Said I probably had them on the sensor for a bit and that they can get on their pretty good sometimes. He recommended a place called MidState camera nearby and said they can give it a try and are really good with that stuff. I guess they do all the camera work for the NE Patriots and Pawtucket Red Sox and bunch of the newspapers and TV stations in our area. I brought my camera to them and showed them the sensor spots and explained that I never bring my camera to the beach of anywhere really dusty, etc. I baby the thing. He looked at it and said they think they could clean it and it didn't look like anything bad. Said they use the Aero-clipse stuff and if that doesn't with they have another solution that people in their business use. They called me back about a day and a half later and said he got it cleaned. Said they had to use the second solution on the two bigger spots but got the smaller ones off with the first stuff they used. The sensor looks like new and no issues or anything. They actually only charged me $45 which I thought was fantastic for the quality of work they did. I'm going to be a bit more diligent in the future about blowing off anything I see on the sensor and not waiting for it to adhere like the ones i just had cleaned off. I think my issue was that I never really wanted to mess with the sensor for fear of damaging it and I never noticed any problems or saw the spots in my photos because I was almost always shooting people and my children in very wide apertures. It wasn't until I started messing around with trying some landscapes and closing down the aperture that I noticed the sensor spots. I guess you live and learn. I'm just glad I didn't have to ship the camera to Sony or that I didn't ruin the sensor altogether. I'm one happy camper right now. Thanks again to you all for your helpful input as always, especially MedicineMan and TRhoads.

Might just be me, but I have great difficulty in reading a large block of text without frequent paragraphs/line breaks. TBH I usually just ignore them, but on this occasion I was very much interested to read your sensor update.

Congrats on getting it cleaned! That looked like a really tough case and I think you handled it really well.

mystik610 wrote in post #18595828
This is Travis' shot, but here's the space we had to work with:

The whole room is basically windows like that. Looks fun right?

Typically when you can't bounce, you want to set two lights up high and at 45 degree angles (corners of the room) and shoot in front or to the side of them so your subjects aren't hit straight on and you get hard light. I placed two umbrellas in the back corners because the room was so small, but the room wasn't wide enough to space them out and it created hard shadows in the middle of the frame.... In hindsight I could have placed a fill light behind me where the DJ was, but I ran out of time to set up lights so went back to good ole' black foamie thingie method. It threw some hard light back onto the floor, and the windows kept catching glare that I'll have to remove in post, but I think it worked OK.

Sometimes in these situations I'll place a small softbox on a light stand and place it behind me at a 45 degree and move it around as I shoot, but the space was seriously small and I didn't want to disrupt things too much.

Cool space. I know you and Travis handled the challenged shooting environment brilliantly.

If anyone out there is thinking about getting into wildlife photography for the first time, or know someone who is, it would be tough to do better than this Sony RX10 IV as a starter camera to see how you like it before spending the 5 or 6 grand on an ILC setup. 600mm equivalent with an auto focus every bit as good if not better than most DSLR's and full frame Sony's. This thing just continues to impress me.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/24cv​g4R

TRhoads wrote in post #18595568
Two from Sutro Baths in San Francisco. We had tried to scout the place Sunday afternoon, but it was an absolute zoo...people everywhere. So we hoped Monday night would be a little more calm. And it was, but there were still people everywhere...especiall​y portrait/wedding photogs using the place to do bride and groom images...and some of them were pretty stuck in their own thing to care about anyone else...so both of these were blends of multiple frames to get the place nearly devoid of people. It was a challenge getting the exposures to blend, since they were all slightly different, but I think it worked out ok. I have not decided which composition I like better.
#2: As the sun lit up the high clouds, but set behind the low level clouds on the horizon...this was the peak of the color...which means not much! SR app used here.

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#2: Traditional LE, 6 Stop Filter, 3 Minutes, well into blue hour, it was underexposed by 1.5 stops at least...but the Sony lets you pull it up...

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Nice.

That's pretty much par for the course out here. It's why many of my beach shots are taken from down low, next to rocks. This is what a typical day at Windansea looks like out here, there are 4 1/2 photoshoots going on in this image, with two more underneath me, shooting against the rock I'm standing on here. The woman in white is waiting for the photog to return with a pop up changing booth. You should see what the reef at La Jolla looks like at sunset too. It's not uncommon to see people at the potholes with their tripod legs overlapping.

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Sigma 135 is great, but its a cat's eye bokeh monster wide open. Stopping it down ever so slightly calms OOF highlights down a lot.

AD600 inside 48 inch octa for fill

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/24vn​QTw

David Arbogast wrote in post #18595838
Cool space. I know you and Travis handled the challenged shooting environment brilliantly.

Thank you David. I can't speak for Travis, but I wouldn't say I handled it brilliantly. Sort of stumbled along and tried to make it work. It mostly worked, but bouncing off glass throws the light in all sorts of unpredictable directions.

mystik610 wrote in post #18595828
This is Travis' shot, but here's the space we had to work with:

The whole room is basically windows like that. Looks fun right?

Typically when you can't bounce, you want to set two lights up high and at 45 degree angles (corners of the room) and shoot in front or to the side of them so your subjects aren't hit straight on and you get hard light. I placed two umbrellas in the back corners because the room was so small, but the room wasn't wide enough to space them out and it created hard shadows in the middle of the frame.... In hindsight I could have placed a fill light behind me where the DJ was, but I ran out of time to set up lights so went back to good ole' black foamie thingie method. It threw some hard light back onto the floor, and the windows kept catching glare that I'll have to remove in post, but I think it worked OK.

Sometimes in these situations I'll place a small softbox on a light stand and place it behind me at a 45 degree and move it around as I shoot, but the space was seriously small and I didn't want to disrupt things too much.

That's a beautiful space. I have an AD600 strobe that I could bring and park it somewhere in a corner and maybe move it around every once in a while to different areas of the room. Here's a link to a video of the space I'll be shooting at night. You can tell what I'm talking about regarding the ceiling (they show it for a few moments) (link: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=9WMFXbJ_FWM). Even if i put a strobe up high in a corner I'm concerned about all the women in their oversized hats. I feel like the light will be coming down causing harsh shadows on their face. I guess I'm going to just try and figure it out on the fly.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18595832
Might just be me, but I have great difficulty in reading a large block of text without frequent paragraphs/line breaks. TBH I usually just ignore them, but on this occasion I was very much interested to read your sensor update.

Congrats on getting it cleaned! That looked like a really tough case and I think you handled it really well.

Sorry about the long running sentences. I'm at work right now and tend to just type as fast as I can and don't pay much attention to proper writing structure. I'll try to make it a point to do that in the future.

I'm also glad I handled it the way I did as well. I didn't want to talk the chance of messing up my sensor trying to save a few bucks on a expensive investment trying to do it myself, especially since those spots were so stubborn.

cc1995 wrote in post #18595875
That's a beautiful space. I have an AD600 strobe that I could bring and park it somewhere in a corner and maybe move it around every once in a while to different areas of the room. Here's a link to a video of the space I'll be shooting at night. You can tell what I'm talking about regarding the ceiling (they show it for a few moments) (link: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=9WMFXbJ_FWM). Even if i put a strobe up high in a corner I'm concerned about all the women in their oversized hats. I feel like the light will be coming down causing harsh shadows on their face. I guess I'm going to just try and figure it out on the fly.

Ah I see what you're talking about...that ceiling will act like a giant light box and those beams will cast shadows.

The walls are white though...you can try bouncing over your shoulder behind you. Even if the ceiling catches some of the light, the walls should act like a fill to lift those shadows. Just make sure not to bounce off those windows.

A few shots before my sensor cleaning that resulted in my recent post. Yes, I spent a lot of time cleaning up those spots on these shots.

1) Smooth refections 96 shots

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/25mu​Kr8

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/25mu​Lbe

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/25mu​LtD

A shot from a few weeks ago that seems to be getting some more attantion on my social media platforms.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Hia5​BA